Failure to tackle deep-rooted race inequality will exacerbate divisions in our society unless urgent Government action is taken, the new Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission has warned today.

The Commission has today published the biggest ever review into race equality in Britain across every aspect of people’s lives, including education, employment, housing, pay and living standards, health, criminal justice and participation. It reveals that while for certain people life has become fairer over the past five years, for others progress has stalled and for some– in particular young Black people – life on many fronts has got worse.

Chair David Isaac said the report reveals a ‘very worrying combination’ of a post-Brexit rise in hate crime and long-term systemic unfairness and race inequality’.

David Isaac also said that the new Prime Minister’s statements are ‘very encouraging’ but previous efforts to address race inequality have been ‘piecemeal and stuttering’ with ‘more one nation platitudes than policies’.

He has also called for a comprehensive new race strategy from Government, the development of stretching new targets to reduce race inequality including in criminal justice, education and employment, as well as better research and reporting to monitor progress.

Today’s report reveals:

Black people are much more likely to be victims of crime and be treated more harshly in the criminal justice system. You are more than twice as likely to be murdered if you are Black in England and Wales and three times more likely to be prosecuted and sentenced than if you are White. In addition to this, race remains the most commonly recorded motivation of hate crime in England and Wales at 82%.

Despite improving educational attainment, ethnic minority people are still being held back in the job market. Black, Asian and ethnic minority workers with degrees are two and a half times more likely to be unemployed than White workers with degrees. Black workers with degrees are paid 23.1% less on average than White workers with degrees.

If you are young and from an ethnic minority, your life chances have got much worse over the past five years and are at the most challenging for generations. Since 2010, there has been a 49% increase in the number of 16 to 24 year olds across the UK from ethnic minority communities who are long-term unemployed, compared with a fall of 2% if you are White. Black workers are also more than twice as likely to be in insecure forms of employment such as temporary contracts or working for an agency – which increased by nearly 40% for Black and Asian workers, compared with a 16% rise for White workers.

Conversely Chinese students and Indian communities are progressing well in many areas of life. The gap between Chinese/Indian and White pupils is growing – in Wales 79.8% of Chinese pupils and 60.8% of Asian pupils achieved A-C grade GCSEs compared with 55.9% of White pupils. However, poor White boys continue to have the worst GCSE results overall. Only 28.3% of those in England achieved at least five grade A-C GCSE results. Asian and Chinese school children have the lowest rate of exclusion, Indians have the lowest unemployment rate among ethnic minority groups at 9.2% compared with 17.3% for Pakistanis/Bangladeshis, and Indians are on average paid 8.9% more per hour than White people.

White women are more likely to report being a victim of domestic abuse than ethnic minority women. This was 7.4% of White women compared with 4.4% of ethnic minority women. However, Black and ethnic minority women exclusively suffer from FGM, honour killing and forced marriage, and specialist services are struggling to meet demand (particularly due to a lack of funding).

When it comes to who runs Britain, overall ethnic minorities are still hugely underrepresented in positions of power – 14% of the UK population is from an ethnic minority background, but out of the 2,686 judges who declared their ethnicity in England and Wales, only 159 (5.9%) were from an ethnic minority. In addition to this, ethnic minority police officers made up only 5.5% of all officers in England and Wales and there are no ethnic minority Chief Constables.

There have also been areas where we have seen welcome progress. For example, the 2015 General Election saw an increase in the proportion of ethnic minority MPs from 4.2% to 6.3%, and since 2008, all ethnic groups have seen an increase in the proportion with a degree-level qualification. For Indian people it was (18.1 percentage points) to 49.5%, for African/Caribbean/Black it was (9.6pp) to (34.7%) and for Pakistani/Bangladeshi it was (9.7pp) to 27.6%.

However, this is not nearly enough progress and much more still needs to be done. Today’s report makes recommendations to the UK Government including:

the need for a comprehensive, coordinated and long-term UK Government strategy with clear and measurable outcomes to achieve race equality;

that the strategy should be developed and delivered between the UK, Scottish and Welsh Governments, and should come under the responsibility of one secretary of state, with clear accountability across Government, and

that all Governments should improve their ethnicity data and ensure it covers a range of research, statistics and ethnic groups to inform their race equality strategies.

In addition to this, the Commission recently wrote to the UN Committee on race (CERD) setting out a series of recommendations for the UK Government to tackle race inequality. These include:

UK Government should carry out a full-scale review of the operation and effectiveness of the sentencing for hate crimes in England and Wales, including the ability to increase sentencing for crimes motivated by hate.

UK Government should take steps to mitigate any discriminatory effects from the access to justice reforms, and

UK Government should ensure that police forces use monitoring, training and scrutiny to make sure stop and search is being used in a lawful and non-discriminatory way.

David Isaac, Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said:

“The combination of the post-Brexit rise in hate crime and deep race inequality in Britain is very worrying and must be tackled urgently.

“Today's report underlines just how entrenched race inequality and unfairness still is in our society.

“If you are Black or an ethnic minority in modern Britain, it can often still feel like you’re living in a different world, never mind being part of a one nation society.

“It is very encouraging to hear the new Prime Minister's commitment to tackling inequality. In order to achieve this it is vital that the Government puts in place a comprehensive and coherent race strategy that tackles these pressing issues and prevents some communities being cut even further adrift from equality of opportunity.”